which are common used in intermediate – level english learners. and then, thesis concludes a range of verb – adverb collocations

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CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION
I. 1 Rationale of the study
Foreign language is a very necessary means of communication helping
people all over the world can exchange the information and understand the
cultures, then promoting the global commerce. Today, one of the most popular
languages is English. The thing is English is spoken as the mother tongue and the
official language in many nations such as England, America, Australia, Canada,
Singapore, India…In addition, it is taught as second language in a lot of countries
around the world including Vietnam. The number of English learners in Vietnam
is remarkably increasing up to now. The fact is that every of them desire to use
English as fluently and proficiently as their first language. However, language
always is a complex aspect of education. Therefore, learning and teaching a
foreign language will face a lot of obstacles. English learners will meet many
difficulties on their way of studying. Many people will find it difficult to
pronounce, to listen or to comprehend an utterance Others will be confused by
the sense of a word, by the similarity in pronunciation and spelling of several
words, etc.
Basing on the experiences of students, teachers and personal knowledge,
we found that almost learners find confused when using English vocabularies.
Firstly, they cannot combine and organize words together to make sense or they
combine wrongly this adjective to that noun, or this verb to that noun… For
example, the word “blond” and “beige”, both of them denote the colour.
However, English people do not say the “blond car” but they say “blond hair”
and vice versa. Moreover, two words may be close in meaning but yet not
collocate with the same items. For instance, “do” and “make” are the same in
meaning but native speakers say “do homework” and “make a cake”. So it
easily makes English learners fail when they combine words together. They do
not know which word can correctly combine together with other word.
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Secondly, to the higher English level people, they do not know in word

combinations, which is a collocation – non-idiomatic phrase and which is an
idiomatic phrase. For instance, in the two word combinations “half seas over”
and “down to the sea”, which is a collocation and which is an idiom? That is the
problem raised in using collocations and word combination in lexical relatives.
The problems can be explained and investigated in semantic field.
Moreover, the main characteristics of lexical collocations are that their
meanings mostly reflect the meaning of their lexical constituents and that the
sequences of lexical items frequently co-occur, even though most native speakers
of English are not aware of collocations.
To sum up, language are full of strong collocational pairs, therefore
collocation deserve to be a central of the vocabulary study (Lexical Relation in
vocabulary – Oxford Press).
I.2. Aim of study
Learning English is getting more and more popular. Improvement of
English in our country is very essential to everyone, especially to English
academic students. They really need guidance help them to avoid mistake in
using English vocabulary and this thesis will play a part in supporting them.
This research will help readers comprehend the verb collocation in
English. It also helps to find out common mistakes in combining words together.
It also proposes the reasons why people get confused with the collocation
especially verb collocation. Moreover, it will give out some suggestions to avoid
common confusion in using verb collocations especially the Verb – Adverb
collocations.
I.3. Scope of the study
The using collocation is very different from language to language. And
there are many kinds of collocation. In this case, we only study the verb
collocation in English and the common verb collocation confusions which are
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met by Vietnamese who are studying English as a foreign language. And we
mainly discuss the Verb – Adverb collocation.

The confusion met in English collocation issue is too much to cover. This
thesis only focuses on the verbs which are common used in intermediate – level
English learners. And then, thesis concludes a range of Verb – Adverb
collocations.
I.4. Design of the study
Chapter I: Introduction
Chapter II: Literature Review
Chapter III: Method and procedures
Chapter IV: Expected findings and Discussion
Chapter V: Conclusion
CHAPTER II. LITERATURE REVIEW
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Collocation is a term appearing in the semantics. We should investigate
the semantics and
all of the relative definitions to comprehend the issue of collocation. Verb
collocation is formed by a verb and another word. Whereas, in English, verb
phrase and idiom also consist a verb and other elements, in order to avoid the
mistake and to help readers not be confused by the similarity of these definitions
we give out a brief and not less clear description of semantic, collocation, idiom
and verb phrase.
II.1. What is semantics?
II.1.1. Definition of semantics
Semantics can be simply defined as the study of meaning. This definition
naturally leads to the question: what is meaning? Meaning is central to the study
of communication, but the question of what meaning really is difficult to answer.
Even linguists do not agree among themselves as to what meaning is. And what
makes the matter even more complicated is that philosophers, psychologists, and
sociologists all claim a deep interest in the study of meaning, although they differ
in their focus of interest. The philosophers are interested in understanding the
relations between linguistic expressions and what they refer to in the real world,

and in evaluating the truth value of linguistic expressions. The psychologists
focus their interest on understanding the workings of the human mind through
language. This is why it is not surprising to find ten books all bearing the title
"Semantics" but talking about different things. In our discussion, we will limit
ourselves to the study of meaning from a linguistic point of view. We have
meaning of a word, a sentence, an utterance, and a discouse.
II.1.2. The role of semantics in language learning
Semantics is the subfield that is devoted to the study of meaning, as
inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of discourse
(referred to as texts). The basic area of study is the meaning of signs, and the
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study of relations between different linguistic units: homonymy, synonymy,
antonym, polysemy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronym, metonymy, holonymy,
exocentricity linguistic compounds. A key concern is how meaning attaches to
larger chunks of text, possibly as a result of the composition from smaller units
of meaning. Traditionally, semantics has included the study of connotative sense
and denotative reference, truth conditions, argument structure, thematic roles,
discourse analysis, and the linkage of all of these to syntax.
The role of semantics is very important in learning a language. Since the
semantics study meaning of words, vocabulary. Although, in communication, we
can hear a sound or can see a written word we still do not understand the
meaning of the sound or written word, then the communication is in failure.
Study the meaning of the word is really important in learning and teaching any
language. That is the reason why studying semantics is very necessary.
II.2. What is collocations?
II.2.1. Definition
Collocation comes from two Latin words, the word cum (“with”) and the
word locus (“place”). Words which form collocations are repeatedly “place with”
each other; that is to say, they often co-occur within a short distance of each
other in speech and in written text. (David Singleton: 2000)

The definitions of collocation appeared a lot in the book and internet. We
should study to understand exactly what collocation is.
Cited from the website Wikipedia, within the area of corpus linguistics,
collocation is defined as a sequence of words or terms which co-occur more often
than would be expected by chance.
Nattinger (in Carter and McCarthy 1988:76) suggests that language is
basically a “compositional” process in which many of its words co-occur
together forming single units of meanings. He calls these as lexical phrases or
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word combinations; and collocations are among other terms of lexical phrases.
However, collocations themselves range from “lexico-grammatical unit” to “free
combination”. The term “collocation” is actually only one among other terms for
similar concept: word combination. Nattinge and De Carrico (1992:21) define
collocations as “strings of words that seem to have certain ‘‘mutual expectancy’’,
or a greater-than-chance likelihood that they will co-occur in any text.” In
addition to that, the following is an explanation by Benson, Benson, and Ilson
(1986 in Bahns, 1993:57): In English, as in other languages, there are many
fixed, identifiable, non-idiomatic phrases and constructions. Such groups of
words are called recurrent combinations, or collocations. Collocations fall into
two major groups: grammatical collocations and lexical collocations.
II.2.2. Types of lexical collocations
Benson, Benson, and Ilson classify lexical collocations by structural types.
According to these linguists, there are 6 types of collocations. Hausmann breaks
down all lexical collocations into a ‘base’ and a ‘collocator’ (Benson, 1989:6).
The base is the prominent element while the collocator depends on the base.
According to Hausmann and Benson, the ‘base’ and ‘collocator’ relationship can
be shown as follows:
a. Adverb + Adjective (collocator – base)
Collocation formed by an adverb and an adjective. In this case, adverb plays a
role as a modifier for the adjective. Adverb will show the degree or status of the

adjective. For example, seriously incomplete, closely acquainted, totally
incorrect, extremely nervous
b. Adjective + Noun (collocator - base)
Adjective functions as a modifier. It gives more information about noun’s
definition. Some Adjective – Noun collocations: black night, dark night,
sleepless night, starry night, long night…
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c. Noun + Noun
Noun – noun collocation is mostly appears in the form of noun + preposition +
noun. Then, the noun after preposition is “base” element. Some example given:
A sum of money, a school of fish, a bunch of rose, a crew of teens, troop of
soldiers…
d. Noun + Verb (base – collocator)
In this case, noun plays as a subject. For example, dog barks, volcanoes erupt,
bell rings, sun shines…
e. Verb + Noun (collocator – base)
A noun (base) can co-occur with a number of verbs (collocator). For example: a
base “examination” we can have a series of verb collocators: administer/conduct/
give an/take an/fail/pass + examination.
f. Verb + Adverb (base - collocator) or Adverb + Verb
Adverb will modify the verb and add more information about manner, situation.
For example, (wind) blow strongly, deeply influence, regularly inform, simply
inform,…
II.2.3. Verb collocation
In this paper, we only pay attention to the lexical collocation and deeply
investigate the verb collocation because verbs and nouns in these two types of
collocations are more mutually selective in context than other structural types. In
other words, they are more contextually predictable
Verb collocation is the combination of a verb with one or more other
words of any part of speech which form multi-lexical units. For example, make

mistake is a verb collocation, with a verb make and a noun mistake.
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It is seen that collocation is also formed by at least a verb and a different
element but it has non-literal meaning, partially like an idiom. A verb collocation
(Noun + Verb, Verb + Noun, Verb + Adverb) has verb functioning as base or a
collocator. In type of Noun + Verb and Verb + Noun, verb plays role as a
‘collocator’ however, in Verb + Adverb type, verb is a ‘base’. This type is
supposed to be looser lexical collocation.
II.3. Verb collocation in distinguish with other combinations of words
like phrasal verb and idiom
II.3.1. What is idiom?
An idiom is a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is
different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words, which can make
idioms hard for ESL (English as the Second Language) students and learners to
understand (cited from the website
/> (Cited from the website: schools.pasoschools.org/education/components) a
phrase or expression that means something different from what the words
actually say. An idiom is usually understandable to a particular group of people
(e.g. using “over his head” for “doesn’t understand”).
For example, "to roll out the red carpet" is to extravagantly welcome a
guest; no red carpet is needed. “Lose your shirt” if someone loses their shirt, they
lose all their money through a bad investment, gambling, etc.
II.3.2. What is a phrasal verb?
A phrasal verb is a combination of a verb and a preposition, a verb and
an adverb, or a verb with both an adverb and a preposition, any of which are part
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of the syntax of the sentence, and so are a complete semantic unit. Sentences,
however, may contain direct and indirect objects in addition to the phrasal verb.
Phrasal verbs are particularly frequent in the English language. A phrasal verb
often has a meaning which is different from the original verb.

(Cited from />For instance, we have phrasal verbs: make up, pass away (die), look up
(find the meaning of a word in the dictionary), put on clothes, send something off
(post something), set off (leave on a journey), give up (stop trying to do
something).
II.3.3.The difference between the other word combinations like phrasal
verb, idiom and verb collocation
However, idiom, phrasal verb and collocation are form by the
combination of words, they have difference. Verb collocation has literal meaning
and we can look up in the dictionary, e.g. “go to school”, “visit museum” we can
look up meaning of each word: go, to, visit, museum then we would have the
meaning of the phrase. It is unlike idiom, we cannot understand meaning of an
idiom by looking up each word in dictionary. For example, sell down the river
means betray someone’s trust but not sell something to somebody in the river.
With phrasal verb, we can look them up in dictionary to get their meaning, and it
is fixed. For example, set off: it is impossible to look up each word then combine
their meaning together. In the dictionary, we can find ‘set off’ means leave on a
journey.
CHAPTER III. METHOD AND PROCEDURES
III.1. Survey
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In the research, we have conducted a survey which investigates the
language competence of the 25 first - year students and 25 second – year students
in English Faculty of Hanoi University of Education in mastering the knowledge
of collocation. Most of them have learned English for 8 or 9 years. The survey
asks students some questions about collocation knowledge and asks them to do a
survey questionnaire related to the collocation.
The 50 – question survey questionnaire has 2 parts:
• Part A:10 questions which require students to realize collocation and
idiom
• Part B: 40 questions to check the verb collocation competence of students.

Among those 40 questions:
 Part I: 20 questions of Verb – Adverb collocation.
 Part II: 20 questions of Verb – Noun, Noun – Verb
collocation.
The survey would firstly show us how students can distinguish a collocation and
an idiom. Secondly, students can have a chance to check their verb collocation
knowledge. And finally, the survey tries to find out the problem confusing our
students.
The result of the survey:
Part A: Collocation and Idiom
In the 50 investigated students, about 33 of the candidates (66%) cannot
distinguish difference between the collocation and idiom? And the rest (34%)
vaguely distinguish the difference between them, almost of them are senior. No
one can show enough evidence for the difference between collocation and idiom.
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The table below shows the result of question: can you point out the
difference between idiom and verb collocation.
Students Yes Yes but not sure No
First year 0 5 20
Second year 0 12 13
(Table 1)
Part B: Verb collocation
The result of the survey shows that no one can answer total 40 questions of Part
B in survey questionnaire. 14 students (28%) correctly answer from 1 – 20
questions. 27 students (54%) correctly answer 20-30 questions. 9 students (18%)
correctly answer 30 – 40 questions. We can see the result shown in the pie chart
below:
* However, there is difference of result between two kinds of interviewed
students, first year and second year students.
To the first year students, they almost do not know the theoretical meaning of

collocation but they understand the way to do the task. In these 25 freshmen,
only 16 students can correctly answer from 20 to 30 questions (64%); 8 students
Pie chart 1
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have 10 to 20 correct answers (32%); and 1 students have fewer than 10 correct
answers (4%).
To the 25 second year students, the numbers have changed. 5 students have from
1 to 20 correct answers (20%), 11 students have from 20 – 30 correct answers
(44%), and 9 students answer exactly from 30 to 36 students (36%). No one can
answer correctly all of 40 sentences.
We also have a bar chart for both results of the first and the second year students.
As we can see, the first year students answer fewer correct answers than the
second year students. The reason is that second – year students have more
experience and they have more chance to meet collocation in materials,
magazine…
With more details, we have the table of result of the first year students and the
second year students and their answers when they do part 1 and part 2 of the
survey questionnaire. The table below will show the detailed result of number of
students who have correct answers for each question.
Abbreviation: SS: interviewed students have correct answer; Ss1: the first year
students; Ss2: the second year students;
Bar chart 1
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Part Question SS Ss1 Ss2
Part I 1 15 5 10
2 11 5 6
3 38 17 21
4 17 8 9
5 24 11 13
6 31 13 18

7 41 17 24
8 24 13 11
9 34 12 23
10 14 5 9
11 20 9 11
12 18 7 11
13 18 7 11
14 46 21 25
15 46 21 25
16 43 21 22
17 26 12 15
18 17 8 9
19 13 9 5
20 20 10 10
Part II 21 30 10 20
22 39 15 24
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23 50 25 25
24 39 15 14
25 48 23 25
26 37 18 19
27 45 21 24
28 47 25 22
29 30 9 21
30 40 20 20
31 38 13 25
32 37 13 14
33 46 21 25
34 42 17 25
35 41 19 22

36 38 15 23
37 39 18 21
38 30 8 22
39 36 17 19
40 29 7 22
Table 2
From the figures of the table 1, we have following result:
- Part I: students of first year have averagely 9.02/20 correct answers; students of
the second year have averagely 13.16 correct answers.
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- Part II: first year students have averagely 11.5/20 correct answers; second year
students have averagely 17.3 correct answers.
Result will be illustrated by the chart below. Then we can compare the result
easier.
*
When students are asked how they choose the options, we received 4 kinds of
feedback:
- decision basing on experience background knowledge: there is a small
number of asked students 5 students) basing on their experience and
background knowledge to finish the task (about 10%). And the second-
year students accounts for 60% of this group.
- decision basing on their feeling and guess: 8 students choose the option
randomly, accounting for 16%.
- decision basing mainly on experience and background knowledge and
little feeling and guess: this choice made up 28% (with 14 students)
- decision basing mainly on feeling and guess and little experience and
background knowledge: this is the choice of majority 46% (23 students).
Bar chart 2
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Pie chart 2
Note:
- exp& B.K > feeling & guess: students choose option basing on their
experience and background knowledge rather than basing on feeling and
guess.
- exp& B.K > feeling & guess : students choose option basing on their
feeling and guess rather than basing on their experience and background
knowledge.
III.2. Discussion with instructor and friends
During the time the thesis has been made, our supervisor and my friends
have helped a lot to perfect this paper. They have given valuable contributions
and precious advice to me. Especially, my supervisor has carefully and patiently
instructed me to complete my thesis.
III.3. Experience from personal background knowledge
I myself sometimes find it difficult to pick up one word in a series of
synonyms to complete a sentence. I realize that meet the problem caused by
collocation. So we can easily approach the issues of confusion in English
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collocation. The issue is pretty serious when we make an academic speech or
writing. Therefore, studying the collocation is very necessary.
III.4. References from book and internet
The sources of material from internet is really helpful to make this thesis
is a complete paper. The e-book downloaded from internet played a certain role
in the data of the graduation thesis.
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CHAPTER IV. EXPECTED FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
IV.1. Common confusions in using verb collocation
IV.1.1. Wrong combination
From the survey, the rate of examined students answering the question
completely is not high. We can see that students commonly confused when they

have to choose 2 or more words together. For example, they have combine give
with someone a favour, however, the correct answer is do someone a favour (in
sentence 12). In the sentence 2, Janet inhaled … when she saw him. There are 11
students answer correctly. 10 % choose weakly, 43% choose patiently, 22%
choose deeply, 25% choose intensely. Then, with this sentence, there is only 22%
have correct answer. In the sentence 15, 25/50 students combined correctly
censored with heavily. 23/25 students choose deeply.
On average, the percentage of wrong combination is about 53%. The
result also shows that students can choose the correct answer with the familiar
verbs like do and make. All of them choose making a sound in sentence 23.

IV.1.2. Confusion of collocation with idiom
It is really necessary to have a clear distinction between idiom and verb
collocation. The issue is that in some cases an idiom and a collocation formed by
a verb - noun, however, the way to comprehend idiom and collocation is
completely different. The combination “like a lot” is a collocation, but “like a
hawk” that mean. if you watch something or someone like a hawk, you observe
very closely and carefully.
There are a lot of students can not distinguish idiom and collocation as we
can see in the table 1 in III.1. Although many think that big tree is a collocation,
in fact it is an idiom to indicate a rich boss. In contrast, stream of abuse is simply
is a collocation unlike 28 students’ thought.
VI.1.3 Difficulty with Verb – Adverb collocations
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For it is clearly illustrated in the table 1 and bar chart 2 in III.1 that both
students of the first year and the second year can do part II much better than in
Part I. Part II checks students the competence of using Verb – Noun collocations
while part I is about the Verb – Adv collocations. Students averagely can
combine correctly over 10 Verb – Adverb collocations and approximately 16
Noun – Verb and Verb – Noun collocations. Generally, we can make a

conclusion that students find more difficulties with the Verb – Adverb
collocations than that with Verb – Noun or Noun – Verb.
IV.2. Reasons leading to the confusion
IV.2.1. Native language interference
In Vietnamese, we also have collocation! For example, Vietnamese say:
rua tay, rua mat, giat quan ao…but in native English speaker say: wash hand,
wash clothes, but clean the face. So the first reason leading Vietnamese learners
to the confusion that is the translation from the local language to the target
language. And the collocation in each country is very different so mistake in
using collocation is not avoidable. About ắ investigated students say that when
meet the trouble with the collocation they tend to transfer from their native
language to target language. That means they use their mother tongue knowledge
background to apply to do the task. In the sentence 17. Her family seems to…
afford to pay the expensive furniture. There are 10 students choose difficultly.
Perhaps, they translate the sentence and options into Vietnamese then deciding
the answer. The similar situation happens in sentence 5 when students combine
apologize with faithfully.
IV.2.2. Lack of collocation competence
Firstly, lack of collocational competence is noticeable when non-native
speakers of English need productive language knowledge. Students either use
only the limited number of lexical collocations they know or under the influence
of their first language “create” unnatural and farfetched collocations. Most
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intermediate and advanced students know such common collocations as have a
quarrel, make a decision, and take the responsibility, but few know the similar
collocations like pick/provoke/start a quarrel, arrive at/reach/take (BrE) a
decision, and assume/bear/shoulder/undertake the responsibility. Collocation
familiarity of English learners lags far behind their passive language knowledge.
One reason for this is that a large number of ‘verb + noun’ collocations are
“arbitrary and non-predictable”. For example one can say: commit a crime and

perpetrate a crime, commit a fraud and perpetrate a fraud. However, one can
only say commit suicide, not perpetrate suicide; commit a sin, not perpetrate a
sin. One can say hold a funeral, but not hold a burial. Likewise, make an
estimate is frequently used, but not make estimation (Benson, 1986a:258-59).
Secondly, we can easily see in the bar chart and the table 2 in III.1, the
rate of second year students who have more correct answers is bigger than that of
the first year students. In process of survey, senior students would have more
correct decisions. So it is clear that with more time of studying English, students
can have a better knowledge background of collocation because they practiced
much more. To Verb – Adverb collocation, there are a lot of adverbs which are
synonym but they sometimes can not collocate with one verb. For example, in
sentence 12, The government has ….announced that the economy would be
stimulated. Two adverbs officially and legitimately are synonyms in some
extend, however, in this case we use officially.
Thirdly, pie chart 2 in III.1 also shows that almost students (46%) decide
their options basing on both of their feeling and their experience and knowledge
background. There are only 10% of students saying that they mainly use their
knowledge background and experience to finish the questionnaire.
In short, competence of using Verb- Adverb collocation and collocation in
general is still not good among our students. Students need to be exposed by
more and more collocations.
IV.2.3 Frequency of Verb collocation appearance in written materials
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Verb collocations appeared a lot in every oral speech and written
materials. Nevertheless, Verb – Noun collocation are used many times than
Verb- Adverb collocations in course books. Verb – Collocations are formally
taught in syllabus of secondary and high school but Verb – Adverb collocations
are not. So that students find Verb – Adverb collocation more difficult is
obviously understood.
IV.3. Suggestions to avoid the confusion of some Verb – Adverb collocations

From the rationale and findings in Chapter IV, thesis will give out some
suggestions of verb collocation so that learners can remember and can combine
words together. Then they can have better English to communicate and study
further the language.
Here, we will introduce a limited number of verbs which appeared in the
survey together with their adverb collocators. Moreover, we also provide some
common used Verbs and their Adverb collocators. To give readers the most
convenience, the verbs will be arranged in the order of the survey. Moreover, we
introduce their synonyms (in some extend) together with their collocators. That
will help to avoid confusion that some students sometimes use adverb collocators
a word they know to collocate with another word when those 2 words are
synonym. The suggestion will only perform the Verb – Adverb collocation.
Especially, that helps learners much in creating more attractive and more
persuasive writing.
Note:
- Bold and underlined word is verb
- Bold word is adverb
- Italic word is example.
- Bold, italic is the synonym (or antonym) with its adverb collocators
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1. CENSOR
The verb appeared in sentence 15. From the result of the survey, we have the
result:
Option 1
st
year students 2
nd
year students
A. strongly 12 7
B. deeply 5 12

C. heavily 5 10
D. powerfully 2 1
The thing is the number of second year students having correct combination
doubles that of first year students. Both of them almost choose the strongly and
deeply. However, correct answer is heavily.
Heavily: the verb censor can locate with heavily to express a strong feeling of
someone.
* CUT
1. with a knife/scissors, etc.
a. thick Make sure you cut the bread nice and thick./ thinly/ cleanly Cut the
stem cleanly, just beneath a leaf joint. Used to describe state of cutting something
b. easily Sandstone cuts easily.
crossways, lengthways Cut the courgette in half lengthways.
2.

reduce something
considerably, drastically, significantly His career was cut short by injury.
2. INHALE
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From table 2, it is clear that there are some students have correct combination,
11/ 50 students (22%). The number of correct answer is not high because inhale
is not familiar with many students.
Other Verb – Adverb collocations of inhale
a. deeply or sharply Janet inhaled sharply when she saw him.
b. slowly
* BREATHE
1.

air/breath
a. fast, quickly, rapidly when someone breathe so many times in a minutes we

use these adverbs to describe. He rapidly breathed when he finished male 100-
meter long.
b. slowly /deeply / shallowly :
c. hard, heavily : lost much power after doing something people breath hard or
heavily. They were both breathing hard from the steep climb.
d. gently / easily, steadily She was beginning to breathe more easily.
e. normally, properly: breathe in a normal way like everyone else. I can't
breathe properly?I'm gasping for air!
f. raggedly He was breathing raggedly, mouth open
2. say quietly
huskily, softly used to describe sound is soft and slight as a breath. ‘I love you, ’
she breathed softly.
3. INJURE
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Sentence 3. This incident could …injure the company's reputation.
Option 1
st
year students 2
nd
year students
A. seriously 17 21
B. hurriedly 0 0
C. deeply 1 0
D. nervously 7 4
In this sentence, correct answer seriously seems to be easier to students. 68% of
1
st
year students and 84% of 2
nd
year students answer correctly.

Other Verb – Adverb collocations of injure
1. harm yourself/sb physically
a. badly, seriously, severely, slightly | accidentally insurance to cover you in
case one of your employees accidentally injures someone
b. deliberately = on purpose
2. damage sb's reputation, pride, etc.
seriously, severely This incident could seriously injure the company's
reputation.
*HARM
a. seriously Misusing drugs in pregnancy can seriously harm your baby.
b. deliberately intend to harm someone not accidentally Mike deliberately harm
his friend’s dog.
c. physically/spiritually harm someone’s body or sensation or spirit He always
harms her spiritually that makes her crazy.
* DAMAGE
- 25 -
a. badly, seriously, severely To describe a serious damage we use these adverbs
The building was badly damaged by fire.
b. slightly there is a damage but a small and not serious
c. irreparably, permanently She may have damaged her health irreparably.
* HURT
1. cause pain/injury
a. badly, seriously the state of the hurt someone has to suffer She fell and her
ankle hurt her leg quite badly. No one was seriously hurt in the accident. ><
slightly hurt but not too seriously. My brother fell down on the ground but he
slightly hurt.
2. be/feel painful
badly, a lot, really My ankle still hurts quite badly. Does it hurt a lot? Ouch! It
really hurts.>< slightly
3. upset some body

badly, deeply, really, terribly hurt others in a strong way Her remarks hurt him
deeply. They never told me why and that really hurt.
4. INFLATE
Sentence 4. The balloon was … inflated with hydrogen.
Answer 1
st
year students 2
nd
year students
Correct 8 9
Incorrect 17 16
There is 34% students have correct choice. This verb is also considered
unfamiliar to our students.